We had some excitement at work Friday. Receptionist came back and told me, “Susan Jones is here!”
I’m lousy with names, so I said, “who?”. She then explained that Susan Jones was the woman who refused to wear a mask back in the early days of COVID. She was the only person I called the cops on and she was "trespassed’ by the state cop who responded.
I was all, “oh, that Susan Jones”, and I called the police. A State Cop arrived while the woman was patiently waiting (masked) to speak with me. He asked if I wanted to see what she wanted and I told him no. She wasn’t supposed to be here, and I wanted her gone.
So, he took her outside and talked with her. At one point he handcuffed her and had her wait in his car while he came in and talked with me. He wrote her a ticket/summons and told her not to return. He told me that if she fails to appear in court a warrant will be written for her arrest.
One of my novax adult students posted something on FB about how the Italian government is waiving some vaccin requirements for Ukrainian refugees who want to get our corona pass and how terribly unfair that is.
I mean, all of Covid, all of the war and THAT is what upsets you?
So today I was in to the hospital for some follow-up tests after being in the hospital for a couple of weeks last year.
As I’m getting into the elevator in the parking garage, this couple gets on behind me. The guy is doing the classic dick-nose thing with his mask.
FFS, we’ve been doing this for two years now, you’re going into a fucking hospital, how fucking hard is it to wear your mask properly for the two minutes you’re in an elevator with someone else?!?
Basically everyone here is either dealing with a medical condition, or visiting someone who has a medical condition. It’s a fucking hospital!
The people at the screening desk made him wear a mask properly, but when I saw we were again heading for the same elevator bank, I deliberately hung back so I wouldn’t end up in a small box with this guy again. If he’s that clueless, I have no intention of trusting him at all if I don’t have to.
One of my coworkers has had COVID twice. He’s unvaccinated, he won’t wear a mask (corporate has maintained that plastic face shields are sufficient), his wife does something in the medical field, and he has two kids. Oh yeah, and he’s an engineer, so he should be smart enough to figure this out.
He has at least two violent coughing fits per day now.
Speaking as a person who’s been called an engineer at several jobs, that is an unjustified leap. We tend to be dolts and suckers. There’s a study looking into how engineers are over-represented in al Qaeda, but I’m not finding it.
The hypothesis suggests that people who claim science expertise, whilst advocating creationism, tend to be formally trained as engineers[1] (with the possibleexception of chemical engineers).
That’s because chemical engineers are really chemists and, thus, are real scientists. I keed. I keed!
My local grocer had a sign at the door: “Mask is required for entry.” You can see where this is going. A masked person took two steps into the store and then removed their mask.
I think that there were two covidiots here, and one was the person who created that sign.
I had no idea. Hell, I had a professor in college who was a young Earth creationist (he supposedly taught vibrations, and the way my career has gone I wish I had dropped the class and found another professor).
There’s another engineer where I work (who, interestingly, is not involved much with engineering in his current position) who fully believes “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams!” even though he has the academic background to understand what happened to the Twin Towers.
No. Everyone reading that sign (include the asshole/covidiot who took their mask off) knew exactly what it meant. Catering to idiot’s and asshole’s should not be encouraged.
I think many of the covidiots, “convoy” people, anti-maskers, and their ilk are quite similar to this guy. The telling phrase in the article:
On Tuesday, (rhe judge) noted a forensic psychiatric assessment found Kitchen to be suffering from a paranoid personality disorder, was low to moderate risk to reoffend and recommended he receive therapy for anger issues.
This really sums it up for many of these people. They were doing OK before the pandemic, holding down some kind of job, and more or less keeping their crazy to themselves. If Jim at the warehouse spouted off about Chemtrails in the sky controlling us, or how there were listening devices hidden in his cupboard, we’d just shrug and tell him to go get another pallet of goods from aisle 14.
But when Jim comes to work spouting off about how Covid is fake and vaccines don’t work, and refuses to follow public health orders? Different kettle of fish. Jim is no longer a harmless kook. Jim is actually causing harm to others. Jim does not understand or see it that way, because his brain wiring is screwed up.
I think there were a lot more mentally ill people flying under the radar just holding it together than we knew about.
To paraphrase Tom Lehrer: when correctly viewed, everyone is screwed
I think your observation is partly right, in that there are always more than you expect at first glance. What also plays a major part IMHO is that a lot of sheer stupidity has come to light because we were in a situation where people were actually dependent for their health on the common sense of others .
I think there is a growing group of people who are not insane per se but who lack essential critical thinking skills. When stress increases, these people tend to jump to conclusions that do not contradict their worldview, or follow people who are able to tell them a concise, clear story, regardless whether that story has anything in common with facts. Add to that the explosive growth of CTs via algorithms and we get where we are today.
Motivated reasoning. Some people will follow the person or belief that makes them feel the best. If that person or belief is challenged on one ground, they will shift to another ground and/or discount the source of the challenge in order to stick with what makes them feel good.
We all probably do this some, but some people do it for everything.
In spite of its sometimes idiotic takes on scientific “controversies”, the Wall St. Journal has been relatively steadfast in supporting vaccination. Yesterday’s op-ed by journal editorial board member Allysia Finley suggests that’s changing, likely for political reasons.
Finley belittled the American Association of Pediatrics and praised Florida’s surgeon general for recommending against Covid-19 vaccination for healthy children, manipulating statistics in attempt to show that “only” 66 children aged 5-11 have died from Covid-19 (the actual number of child deaths for the pandemic is over 900, not counting the vastly greater number sickened and winding up in the hospital) and pretending that parents of healthy kids have nothing to worry about. 63% of children hospitalized during the Omicron surge have had no pre-existing medical conditions. So what if your kid’s so sick he had to be hospitalized? Only death counts, and we can fudge the numbers for that.
It’s probably paywalled, but you may be able to read just why Finley thinks Covid risks are “trivial” for children.
As for Ladapo*, this is a guy who declared that masks haven’t saved lives, and who has extreme difficulty conceding the usefulness of Covid-19 vaccines - for anyone. From his Florida confirmation hearing:
BOOK: Just a yes or no. Do vaccines work in fighting against COVID-19, yes or no?
LADAPO: Senator, I just—I, I, as a scientist, you know, I, I, I, I am compelled to answer the scientific question. And I’d be happy to answer any specific scientific question that you have related to vaccines and COVID-19.
*I keep seeing his name as Lapdog, which as far as Gov. DeSantis is concerned, is what he is.
The fact is that very few kids die every year, so any talk about raw numbers can be made to sound low. I mean, even 900 when compared with 1 million could sound “trivial.” But Covid-19 is in the top 5 or 10 leading causes of death in kids. (Depending on specific age range.) These are kids who shouldn’t be dying of anything.
This is as good of a thread as any to post this. I was listening to a podcast about dancing plague and other historical “mass psychosis” diseases, and it reminded me so much of anti-vax, anti-mask, and ivermectin type things, just in reverse.
No real point, other than that people are incredibly suggestible, and whether the suggestion they latch onto is good, bad, or neutral seems to be up to chance. I mean, I can imagine, a world where Trump thought the vaccines were his triumph and pushed them relentlessly.
Yep. Part mass psychosis, part real (ergotamine poisoning, see St. Vitus dance AKA chorea minor, caused by infestation of wheat by claviceps purpurea).
I had no idea. Hell, I had a professor in college who was a young Earth creationist (he supposedly taught vibrations, and the way my career has gone I wish I had dropped the class and found another professor).